Sunday, April 22, 2012

The map is never big enough

The scope and scale of the Euro Truck Simulator 2 world is the result of a combination of priorities and compromises.

After we finished ETS1, there was a huge wave of feedback asking for "more local roads" - this feedback was really so loud and frequent that we decided to do something about it. There was no chance to squeeze in enough proper non-highway-type roads into a map with the ETS1 scale, we had to go for a more detailed map. We knew we would still be skipping large percentage of highways even with a larger scale map, there is no way would reproduce the real world in anything close to 1:1 scale (not to speak about the implications for gameplay with cargoes taking real days, not minutes, to deliver), but we felt lot more detail was needed.

The scale we decided upon in the end was the scale used in German Truck Simulator and UK Truck simulator "sister" projects. We had built those games to be the starting point for further growth, and this is indeed what the ETS2 world expands upon. Basically we traded detail for coverage. Once you start at a given detail, you can push coverage - the extent of the virtual world - over time, for as long as you can last. But if you start with small scale, there is a hard limit on how much detail can be hammered in. So the trajectory we are following is
what was already started some 4 years ago.

At this time, there is over 30 man-years invested into the ETS2 map, counting the map construction itself and building of models and prefabs for the world. We have added new territories of course and added additional polish and
roads to the existing areas, but it's a laborious incremental process. The map is a huge investment of time and money, really major risk for us. We have poured in everything we have ever earned from the earlier games.

Of course, now that we have better road coverage, there is huge pressure from you to add complete territory of Europe, and soon. Unfortunately, even though we would love to have all of Europe covered, this is going to take a lot more work and time to achieve. You can view ETS2 as a milestone towards this goal - we hope that the game's sales will help us finance further evolution of the Euro Truck concept and the world in which it is taking place.

Creating a 1:1 map would be awesome but that's indeed nearly impossible to do or it will take ages. But what you could do of course (if it's possible) is instead of creating multiple or more/new games keeping ETS2 and improving it, this by adding new countries/cities, different trucks (old(er) models) and or trailers and sell this as a DLC. And make it a payable DLC so people who wanna see new features have to buy it. So you guys don't have to spend all money in creating another game from scratch but just continue to build on this one. I'm having no knowledge about creating games or something but I think this strategy will make you grow quick(er) because ETS2 is huge step forward in creating the ultimate simulator for us. Just keep advancing and updating the game.

I unerstand :) I'm same to you! Like having discs of all my games. What I ment is: You can still buy the game on disk and/or online with a creditcard and then buy an expansion pack with more/new cities etc .. :)

Yes Yes ofcourse but why make a new game (ETS3) when this one will already be awesome? I mean, for ETS3 they start with configuring ETS2 so instead of making a whole new game ETS3 they can add new elements and features inside this one?!

I think that coverage is big enough, I mean, who doesn't want whole Europe or more cities in his/her country (even if it's already on the map), but come on... THIS IS F* HUGE! And remember all those unique landmarks and details we know from previous posts. There is no other game like ETS2.

BTW, I like that feature visited/not visited cities and explored/unexplored roads. Perfect idea!

Seeing as I have tried adding to maps myself via the graciously provided editor I know the insane amount of time it takes to manually construct these things with any amount of details added.

Here's to hoping people will buy this so that expansions will be very much a reality. I think all of us would be happy to help expand the world into each others countries, given time for you to put it all together.

loads of respect,this looks amazing.. a small criticism:i see in belgium the cities liege and brussels,while the most important industrial city would be Antwerp.As it is i believe 2nd(or 3th) biggest port in europe i think it deffenetly needs to be in the game..

u might complain tht its a minor detail..and i guess it is but its the details tht make a game good or bad ^^

Yep, everyone deserve to be there, my country's actually not there, but I'm OK with it becouse SCS have putted enough effort in the game so far, and the map's going to get bigger if the sales went well, SCS will add all countrys, just that they don't have enough time till August... so, the map's big enough for now, and I'm sure SCS will add more countrys later.. btw if you want it big with the release of the game.. why don't we wait 2 more years and have it, ay ?... :D..

Read the whole text CETS, they just explained why the have done it like this.Be happy so much detail in one map with such coverage is a real accomplishment. Good work and we'll try to make ETS3 even better by buying ETS2 and recommending as much as possible.

Seriously just shut up guy above Chris. If you can do better, go mod it. Make every city, country, town,road, motorway and village in all of Europe. When you've done that, THEN you can complain and we'll all agree with you. Mark.

If this should be final map, then create more cities and roads models, (more hiden challenges) and finish france italy austria slovak and poland roads and cities in the whole country, we can wait, we support you SCS, you know best to create maps. sry for eng. THX

Very nice map. I never understood though why you didn't make the games map of lets say GTS extendable by DLC's (or Add Ons) and added country by country to it over time. I'm certain that every fan of ETS/GTS would have bought all maps over time which would have given you a lot more profit than making a new game everytime.

Also with this huge effort going into the new version of ETS i really hope that you give up on that completely pointless and retarded A-B-C class truck system. A truck has a performance defined by hp/torque and thats it. I really hate it to see a truck advertised with 500 hp in the shop but since it's C-class it's weaker than a 350hp B-class truck. Thats pure bull.

I made a complete rebalance mod for GTS that gives each truck precisely the power advertised (and also removes the completely unrealistic rocket truck acceleration and power of most former A- and B-class trucks which is A LOT more playable and satisfying and believable than the original GTS.

So please work on the trucks simulation, remove the class system from former games and the unrealistic performance of trucks and make it a lot more believable, don't let them drive again as if they are driving over ice (Play NFSW to see how a GOOD driving model works). Anything else would render all your efforts that went into the nice map, trucks and grafix of the new game pretty much USELESS.

Maybe it's not so easy with paid DLCs or addons or whatever we call it -- there are publishers and they certainly have some conditions under new content for game can be released. We can only guess... Fact is that if it was possible, I would buy DLCs for SCS's games too -- even though I hate DLC business model.

By the way... giving any NFS game as example of good driving model? Come on... ;-)

I think it's more a technical problem since the map can't be split into several parts. Would require some major changes in the game / 3d engine i guess. Kinda like a map model that FSX uses which can work with any number of extensions / mods at the same time.

And sorry but NFSW has 10 times better driving model than any SCS game ever had.

If they stick to the pacejka simulation for the driving model it would actually be easy. If i remember right it was even planned to use different pacejka parameters for different tires in the 18 WoS seriea, especially Haulin and ALH but they didn't do it.All it takes are different pacejka parameter sets per type of tire and different base parameters (or modifiers) for dry, wet, snowy and icy roads.

Cool. But... you have a fairly large and insanely devoted fanbase who have proved to create a lot of fine mods and maps in the past. Why not just release the map editor in advance, give some general instructions and crowdsource most of the work and just use what you need?

Leeds has the biggest road container distribution centre in the UK .They should have removed Sheffield which has virtually no haulage industry now the majority of the steel works have closed down . I just looked at the map and cannot understand why they have added a road across to where Hull would be but no Hull on the map so the road goes nowhere .

It really makes it seem like they did not research/design this properly before implementing it

At least though the UK is on the map which is more than a lot of European countries are getting . I would have preferred less cities in each country but more countires

Cannot understand why Cambridge is on the map . The only thing it is famous for is its University and definitely NOT road haulage . its also an absolute nightmare to drive a lorry round in with cyclists wobbling all over the road and most of the City has lorry bans

I wouldn't say that cities are too small, they will make each city different and also the scale of the map will be 4x bigger than ETS1.. you probably can't imagine it but believe me the map will be huge.

YOU JOKE ?! There is not spain ? The is noth Italia or south france ?!

I am disappointed, very disappointed. And in case of disappointment, my sentence is downloading. I hope my money that you will not you have be a lesson to take the customers for a fool like the big américan studios.

The SCS team could increase their revenue by doing the same marketing strategy as Maxis/EA Games.

Step 1: release base game ( moderate pc spec requirements) Step 2: -develop extra content for truck shops example: performance parts, new exterior/interior content. - add a bunch of extra features that might of been cancelled from the base game to keep the system requirements down Step 3: release the expansion pack ( higher system requirements)Step 4: gather feedback, wishes and requests and release further more expansions based on the fan base with high-end systems.

I do understand not everybody can afford a high-end PC but those that do have a high-end PC also deserve to run their favourite game at the highest possible quality. A game of this genre is always looked down upon because of its limits I say release expansion packs of 'director cut' content all the compromises that have been made for low end pc users bundled in a pack for those that CAN run it. No Limit!

Thats kinda what i said above. I really would love to see them publish DLC's with map and other extensions after the release of the base game so that at one day you can haul stuff from Gibraltar via Moscow to Peking or so.

I know everyone would like his country in the game, but this is impossible.But the truth is that I expected more countries than the old game or at least the same like ets1.I was disappointed not to see the Spain,Portugal,danmark,hungary and if I'm wrong I see only northern Italy.will wait at least to see good quality in new map. greetings from GREECE,and please buy the game don't downloading

Maybe Romanian roads are not so interesting...why there are so many guys who wants Romania in the game? I think that we can be happy whit this map, there are so much roads and country to drive! And don't forget that after the release the community modders are so active, so you can maybe find romanian maps with that way!SCS can't do miracle XD

What's so great in this map that people says "wow"? This map looks like bigger version of GTS+UKTS with external routes. I want to drive from Finland to Greece and from Ukraine to Portugal! Don't you see this game will be focused in Germany? I have enough of the German cities...

I love when people say "why don't you". I don't have small company in my garage ok? If they are making game that should be better than ETS1 they should make whole Europe. Why they spend 2 years to make bigger Germany??? They could use maps form GTS and UKTS and make in same scale other countries! With some upgrades the map would be twice bigger then ETS1. Why it's Germany and UK again???

MAIN priority should be finish France, Italy, Poland, Denmark!!! Add some missing important cities and some more roads. Then release the game... After that create Spain, Portugal, Scandinavia like DLC or next update... also Slovakia, Hungary and whatever else. I think it would be the best plan! SCS You're already almost done already just finish unfinished countries.Who agree with me??

I am just wondering if they are actually showing ALL of the map ETS1 players will remember how the countries were blacked out until you paid to be unlock them .This could well be the same and they have just shown part of the map .ScS know they will quite possibly lose a lot of sales if they only have a small part of Europe in there and alienate players in countries not covered .

i sure hope it will indeed be that only a part is shown.i would understand that some requested countries don't make it but as for example Spain, portugal & Italy (few of the original united countries of europe). but i'm sure they keep a lot as surprise too, and they will be in game, even if only to make sure they don't lose fans from these big countries.

SCS Team grat job on the work you done, but in all these years you just not get enough work on Europe map in generally. Yeah, it's quite big but not big enough... so sadly about the map. I'm dissapoitment about the size of map. What the hack happend with... where is Spain, Portugal and roads to south Italy, other regions of France, regions of Poland, Slovakia, Austria... and where is other countries that belongs to EUROPE. Where is balkan counties (Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bolgaria, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Albania, Greece). For anyone is huge map, but for others is a big dissapotment -- And this is for all the players of ETS that belongs to balkan countries. That's all i can say. It's a sadly reality :( --- Alex(RO) that i'm commitment for balkan coutries added to map.

Hi Anonymouscan you please put HUNGARY and BUDAPEST on the map please cities along the way from Wien to budapest are Wien,sopron 84 highway number mosonmagyarovar,E60 and E75 as refered as But hungarian refered as M1 To get to gyor you have to use the M1 then turn off then go on the 83/82turn off and then go into the city center then drop off goods and then proced the same you goto Budapest on the M1 or other destanations,to have a better idea where im going on about goto www.magyarorszag.autopalyan.hu/m1.php i hope you find this usefull and please do this

It's good to see that you're keeping us informed, and while I'm sure that we'll have lots of routes and cities to explore on this map, I think you should add more cities to the existing countries. Germany, UK, Belgium and Netherlands have a fair number of cities, but there's only a quarter of France and only 3 Italian cities on the map, which is quite a shame. I can understand that you can't add all the countries in Europe and that as much as I'd like to see Romania, Bulgaria or Greece on the map, that is impossible at the moment, but at least finish the work on the existing countries and add more roads and cities to France and Italy.

Whoa, huge map...great scs!!!For the future, why you guys don't expand this map with the DLC system? I love the DLC if they add quite a lot of thing(like GTA IV) and I think that can help your small team to find more resources...

there are expansions for other simulator games like "farming simulator" so why not...there are modders who can create stand-alone trailers, so why not extra trucks (longlines/torpedo's), accesories, drivers, .... for maps i think it will need serious patches. but i believe the costs might be lower then going for ETS3 straight after this.

I second that. I'd also like to see the directory structure and logic for some parts of the resources changed in a way that makes the game finally MODDING FRIENDLY because it's one of the worst games for modding out there unlike what SCS says and every experienced modder knows what i'm talking about.

First of all it should have a resource structure that actually allows adding of trucks without replacing existing ones.

Second of all it should allow adding map extensions without replacing the whole map.

and so on ...

Would also help with DLC's.

But such decisions would have to be made at the beginning of the development, not at the end ...

I don't understand why everyone is so excited. You are going to buy the exact same map of GTS and UKTS with a little bit added of France, Poland etc. That means more than 50 percent of the map was finished already. Why do you want to buy the same product over and over again?

Hi, well the game looks great - i just want to be clear about one thing which i'm not after reading the blog. Will there be more minor roads in ETS2 than in GTS and ETS. I like these games but felt that more minor roads were needed. I am hoping that ETS 2 will expand on the GTS map and not just by adding more countries but by making those countries more detailed ie more minor roads than GTS has. Can you confirm if this will be the case.

Beautiful map that you set up, but you have to worry so much about small towns, and roads, that do not realize is still missing in this map there are many countries, Spain, Portugal, Sweden ... The ones I mentioned, is what I felt I was missing doing right, what I remembered, but imagine the other countries that were not mentioned, this is a bit disappointing, but it's like, the more the map is small and is more done, as we come acompanhandos all these years, and the larger the map, but hard to do well because it takes a long time, and you only have until August. But if you think about the map is relatively large compared to other issues.

Hello to the good people of the scs team.This what i am about to say is something that i did say before butt i will say it again is it possible to have Finland in the new ets2 map because it will work better then the mod maps of Finland that i have been using now and if my country is not in the game and it can not be taken from your web site later maybe as on extra future from the download section then i think that i must keep my old games and not buy the new one and the reason for that is I WRILLY NEED TO DRIVE in all off the countrys in europe and not in few off them.

They can't do it, because ETS 2 map will be at least 4 times bigger, than in ETS 1. And SCS want to add a lot of new models and make roads look like real, so its easier to create new map, because old one is small.

do you you think scs we're stupid??????????????????????????????????THIS IS THE MAP FROM GTS!!!!!!!!!THIS IS THE MAP FROM GTS!!!!!!!!!THIS IS THE MAP FROM GTS!!!!!!!!!two years just to add to some (less than 3/4 of the excisting one MAP)roads?AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO SEES THAT??????REPLY FANS!!!!

No, you're really not the only one. The fact GTS and UKTS maps will be used is known maybe for year or so, as well as size and coverage of map. Rally can't understand how many people wonder a complaining now, it's all long time known facts.

But as LP says, there will be more details. Considerable part of both maps should be re-worked, and there are many new small roads. In addition, there are two new German cities (Osnabrück and Kassel).

You know what -- just browse this blog. From first post up today. You'll see amazing evolution from GTS/UKTS to ETS2.

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